{"id":17309,"date":"2026-08-08T21:17:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/?p=17309"},"modified":"2026-08-08T21:17:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:17:50","slug":"opinion-why-we-all-must-never-be-a-silent-witness-to-wildlife-environmental-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/?p=17309","title":{"rendered":"OPINION- Why we all must never be a silent witness to wildlife\/environmental destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"

OPINION.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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So with perhaps the worst kept local secret that the BBC drama Silent Witness has been filming in and around Macdonald Close, I thought it only apt to spell out the real life investigative drama that has unfolded around Rattlechain, both at the lagoon and land adjacent off the former Duport’s Tip- over time two separate crime scenes for sure.<\/p>\n

In terms of the deaths of dozens of birds this was a far from straightforward case, but I was a first hand witness and recorded the demise that would eventually catch out the killers.<\/p>\n

Death of a Swan | What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?<\/a><\/p>\n

BE IN NO DOUBT, THIS WAS A CORPORATE WILDLIFE CRIME<\/strong>, but there was repetitive deniability from the company protected by the civil service and political actors who were part of the same network, much of it harping back to Albright and Wilson’s military and academic links. Dumping a a banned rat poison<\/a> and calling it a “waste management licence” is a disgusting present to the future, buried and using the passage of time to then use that site to build houses on top of it. Just add 50 cm of topsoil, and Bob is your mother’s brother. The deniability is always there and written into policy platitudes that claim to care about human and environmental health but which is just a smokescreen for making money.<\/p>\n

I have never “trusted the science” to give answers because the science is always bought, the scientists in this case were proven liars and deceitful at every turn. White phosphorus and its murderous past was never raised at any meetings we had with Albright and Wilson and then Rhodia, held in Oldbury , and when that chemical came to light, it then became a matter of how much the birds had in their body, rather than the real fact of how much of the lethal substance they had ingested, and that they should never have ingested any at all. Louisa Merryfield<\/a> and Mary Wilson<\/a> had tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes with the same toxic deception, but this was a company doing the same dirty trick.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The birds were of course, the silent witness here. But I was not silent and knew they did not die from natural causes. Video evidence of their demise was supported by previous research and sites where the issue had occurred. In many ways we were lucky to ever find out the truth, but the truth is an agent of energy which cannot be bargained with or corrupted like officers from agencies supposed to be regulating looking the other way.<\/p>\n

Albright and Wilson of course made a range of deadly chemicals as well as storing them on their site with many fatal consequences<\/a>. Their glyphosate mix, a carcinogenic blend are all the things that Rachael Carson warned us about, just diluted as an alternative to something more potent that it replaced. AW had always played this game with red phosphorus replacing white in matches. Problem- reaction- solution. They were just manufacturing consent.<\/p>\n

Silent Spring on the former Duport’s Tip.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How perverse that tonnes of waste could have been tipped across former agricultural land , toxic and undocumented for so long and then buried with the foundry sand dumping shysters making a mint out of that.<\/p>\n

The axing of Millennium forest in 2025 and the more recent spraying event just continue this leitmotif of destruction and attack on nature.<\/p>\n

Given the planning history and development pressure around this land, the concern is obvious: this looks like an attempt to chemically suppress or destroy ecological interest before it can properly inform planning, The Local Plan, SDS, LNRS, biodiversity net gain or development decisions.<\/span><\/div>\n
To be blunt, this has the appearance of\u00a0evidence destruction by herbicide<\/b>.<\/span><\/div>\n
And this is what Sandwell Council had to say as an accomplice in this act with an FOI request I put in seeking the claimed “ecological survey” that had supposedly been carried out prior to the tree clearance.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cThe developer is aware of the long-standing objections relating to the proposed use of land and asserts that objectors have sought to adversely harm their interests through the spreading of misinformation and inaccurate statements, relating to the potential development of the site, with particular emphasis on the ground conditions and ecological\u00a0implications of the same.\u00a0 It is felt that disclosure of the information at this point, prior to a firm decision to develop or prior to a planning application being submitted is premature. It is considered that sharing information prematurely could lead to speculation and discussion outside the formal planning processes, which would divert time and resources from ensuring a thorough and considered approach.\u00a0 The disclosure would clearly cause adverse harm to the developer as it will result in the need for further rebuttals, when these matters should be dealt with at the appropriate stage i.e. through the planning application process or through an Examination in Public of the Local Plan.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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The loss of all that green space could not possibly result in the biodiversity net gain that the council love to talk abut on paper, but “adverse harm” to nature.<\/p><\/div>\n

Who knows what case awaits for Dr Nikki Alexander and the gang in the programme and series 30 of the long running saga, but the area in question is a study of historic pathological wrongs , somehow mitigated by the flap of a butterflies wings or the growth of a rare plant. If we loose these areas then what future will there be to delight men’s eyes?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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OPINION.\u00a0 So with perhaps the worst kept local secret that the BBC drama Silent Witness has been filming in and around Macdonald Close, I thought it only apt to spell out the real life investigative drama that has unfolded around … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17309"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17315,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions\/17315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}